Austria in Transit: Displacement and the Nation State

Austria in Transit: Displacement and the Nation StateCultural Responses in the Austrian Context

The international workshop Austria in Transit: Displacement and the Nation State will be held at King's College London from Thursday 31 August - Saturday 2 September 2017. The workshop examines cultural responses to issues of transit and the place of the nation state in an era of mass international displacement. Its contributions will focus on responses to the current refugee crisis, as well as those which offer a historical or comparative perspective on questions of human displacement and mass migration in the Austrian context. Selected papers will be published in the twenty-sixth issue of the journal Austrian Studies. Austrian Studies is a peer-reviewed yearbook published in English under the auspices of the Modern Humanities Research Association. An extensive public programme of film screenings and discussions has been planned alongside the academic sessions. Prizewinning filmmakers Jakob Brossmann (Lampedusa in Winter 2014) and Nina Kusturica (Little Alien 2009), as well as the acclaimed composer Thomas Larcher, for public events at King's and the Institute of Contemporary Arts will be joining the workshop. There will be a further 'sneak preview' film screening for the conference participants on the final evening.

This workshop is part funded by Language Acts and Worldmaking under our Small Grants Scheme.